Senators ask if Trump's Ukraine peace plan really is a US plan
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has insisted that President Trump's 28 point plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war was drawn up by the US -- contradicting senators who said he told them it was a Russian "wish list". We look into that suggestion.
Also in the programme: What do the bandits kidnapping schoolchildren in Nigeria really want? How a celebrated Argentinian writer discovered that her nanny was a KGB agent; and the BBC's climate correspondent shares some reflections as the COP climate talks come to an end.
(Photo: Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a Russian strike on a high-rise residential building in Ternopil, western Ukraine, 21 November 2025. Credit: Maxym Marusenko EPA/Shutterstock)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:10.0 | Hello, welcome to the programme. This is News Hour from the BBC World Service. My name's Paul Henley, |
| 0:15.8 | the programme is coming to you live from London. Coming up a bit later on, we're going to be hearing |
| 0:20.6 | from the director |
| 0:21.5 | of a new film and also from the husband of British Iranian Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe. It's about a |
| 0:28.0 | new drama based on her detention in Iran. It was important for me, for our family to tell the story. |
| 0:36.5 | I mean, there are some bumpy bits in our story. It starts tough and it's a nice happy ending at the end, but it takes some time to get there. I think it's been important for her to appreciate just how much, and it comes from the drama, how much kindness and care there was in the outside world, which when you're stuck in behind four walls, you don't see. |
| 0:54.7 | I remember saying at the press conference, it took a village to get Nazan home, and it took so many |
| 0:58.9 | kind people. |
| 0:59.7 | A full interview with him coming up towards the end of today's edition of the programme. |
| 1:04.7 | First, talks are taking place in Geneva today about a US-backed peace plan for Ukraine. |
| 1:10.4 | Washington representatives are for the first |
| 1:12.5 | time involving senior diplomats from Ukraine and from the European Union and the UK. The 28-point |
| 1:19.0 | plan has caused some concern in Ukraine and among its European allies. It includes giving up land to Russia, |
| 1:26.4 | forgetting about them joining NATO and cutting Ukrainian |
| 1:29.9 | armed forces. All that looks to Kiev, like rewarding Moscow's aggression, which continues, |
| 1:35.9 | of course. When President Trump was boarding the Marine One helicopter yesterday, he was asked |
| 1:42.0 | if the peace plan was his final offer to Ukraine. It's hard to hear, |
| 1:45.9 | but he appears to say it's not all over. |
| 1:49.4 | No, not by my president. I would like to get to peace. It should have been, it should have happened a long time ago. |
| 1:56.8 | The Ukraine war with Russia should have never happened. If I were president, it never would have happened. |
| 2:02.5 | We're trying to get it ended. One way the other, we have to get it ended. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.